OK, the clearest and latest statistics I found on a quick search found a ratio of 2.4 sworn LEOs per 1000 population in the 2009 DOJ report.
The 2007 Small Arms Survey reported handgun ownership in the USA was 888 handguns per 1000 citizens (explicable by the fact that very often multiple guns are owned by one person).
So even if we assume an average 4 handguns per person, that's still 200 times the rate of civilian vs LEO guns.
Do we have any reason to assume that civilian ammunition sales are not similarly hundreds of times the rate of government purchases? The guns & ammo industry is close to $4 BILLION dollars yearly and is doing nothing but going up. And yet some DHS purchase orders for a few hundred MILLION dollars are somehow indicative of a secret plot? (That's if I read your posts right John and it was 1.6 billion rounds being contracted for, which at govt. rates would be something like $500-750K?)
John, I don't know if anyone else has brought this up, but I find the evidence lacking. I think what we had was a perfect storm, if you will- a Democrat reelected, fanning fears that a 'secret plan to ban guns' (which Wayne LaPierre talked about all too readily all through the election cycle) was about to be put in place- then the shooting in Colorado- followed by Sandy Hook, both incidents which sickened all right-thinking people, but which also added extra panic for those who saw false-flag operations wherever they looked. And the great thing about conspiracies and cover-ups is, any evidence that contradicts the conspiracy theory is just evidence of how effective the cover-up is.
I will continue to maintain that it is civilian sales in this panic-stricken environment that drove the shortage- and as long as the panic lasts, so will the shortage. So please, REMAIN CALM and everything will get back to normal. Although prices, now, will never get back down to quite where they were in the good old days of last September.
